I would also like to thank everyone for entering the giveaway. I had an overwhelming response and it really blew me away! With all the requests for the various pears, I can tell you now that the most popular pear is the Little Niri Pear.

I was rather surprised. I was expecting the biggest and most expensive pears to be most popular. But looks like you guys voted for cuteness over everything else. Niri is rather cute. 😉

I would also urge you to visit my two big supporters of the Amigurumi Pears. Firstly, Melissa Goodsell of One Crafty Mumma, you totally rock! I know many of you have visited my site for the first time through her gorgeous blog. For those who have not heard of her, do visit her blog. She is famous in the scrapbooking and sewing world here in Australia. And I think she’s becoming a rather good crocheter too!

My other big supporter is Vivian of Ecoyarns. Her daughter, Ysoline, was just so patient during the Amigurumi Pears photoshoot. Wasn’t she just precious? Vivian runs a very successful online shop dedicated to organic and eco-friendly yarns, fibres and fabrics.

And Ecoyarns will also be sponsoring my next giveaway! I’ll tell you more about it in my next post. If you don’t want to miss it, get automatic updates from me via email or RSS.

Vivian of Ecoyarns lent me her gorgeous daughter, Ysoline, for a photo shoot with my Amigurumi Pears. I got all set up in Viv’s backyard and started taking a few photos. BUT I’m not a mother so I didn’t really know how to communicate with kids that young.

Viv captured me trying to coax her to cuddle the pears and maybeeee smile for the camera.

But all she did was stare back at me with the pears around her. I didn’t get any decent shot of her on my camera. Just look at Ysoline looking at me!

Her mummy, on the hand, was very clever and came prepared. She not only have her camera with her, she had a pocket full of lollies! Vivian offered her a marshmallow and Ysoline instantly came alive. She posed happily with Mami pear while having a mouthful of marshmallow. She is so precious!

Ysoline signals the end of the photo shoot by kicking the Amigurumi Pears away and running off in the opposite direction! Hehehe… Too cute!

P.S. The Amigurumi Pear giveaway is still on and open to everyone. Leave a comment to win a pear of your choice. CLICK HERE to enter. I will ship internationally.

P.P.S. Check out Ecoyarns for a huge range of eco friendly knitting yarn, spinning fiber and much more!

I bought a little toy from a soya bean drink stall in Singapore called Mr Bean. It’s such a cute little toy and I just couldn’t resist him.

When I got home and was putting the toy together, I saw this paragraph at the back of the box:

“Have you felt the beauty of a smile, the warmth of a touch or the bliss of simply watching the world go by… Share a little time and imagination with us. Let’s indulge in Life’s Simple Pleasures.”

If you’ve been to Singapore before, you would know that life there is far from simple. It’s fast paced, busy, loud and did I say, busy? It’s hard to find people enjoying life’s simple pleasures. I thought about this carefully and have managed to capture five wonderful memories from my trip there.

1. Meeting my cousin’s 17 month old daughter for the first time. Her name is Sofea and she is soooo cute. She has the sweetest smile and her face just lights up when she giggles.

2. Meeting my friend’s daughter, Georgia, for the first time. Teresa was heavily pregnant and gave birth the day before we flew back. We didn’t get a chance to meet her baby son, Kieran, but Georgia sure was entertaining!
She played doctor and nurse with Richard and it was such a crack up! Don’t be fooled by the photo. Georgia wasn’t the nurse. She kept bossing Richard around and Nurse Richard played along, following her every instruction very carefully. Haha… She is so imaginative and will make a very good big sister!

3. Catching up with my mum and three brothers. My two teenage brothers grow so fast! I’ve only met them a few months ago when they visited me here and now Irfan is already taller than me! Here we are sharing a meal together at Pastamania the night before we flew home. Who would have thought that their pesto pasta would actually be the best tasting pesto I’ve ever had! Either I need to eat out more in Australia or Pastamania got a good thing worth coming back to!

4. Friends! It’s always too long between visits! I miss having Jeevan and my two girl friends, Radiana and Dianah, around. But they’re more like family to me so the years never seem to have passed by when we get together again.

5. Finding unexpected surprises throughout the ever changing Singapore. I’ve only been away a bit more than two years and there are so many new buildings around. The train line has expanded too. There are so much construction around that it’ll be exciting coming back to see all the changes.

Here we are testing out Goretex jackets from the National Geographic shop where Salihin works at. The cold room is in the shop to test their jacket. Cold wind blasts you and the room is set at -7 degrees celcius! Such a cool experience, especially when it’s stinking hot and humid outdoors.

And the new Marina Barrage with the water play area and the grass roof was an interesting visit. It was also a hydrologist’s dream (…ahem… Richard). He took pictures of everything! I was just happy to find a place where I don’t have to fight for standing space and the water play area really helped cooled me down. (It was just so hot and humid!)

Do you remember the yarn stash explosion and how I’m knitting Rosemary a Wisp shawl? Well, it didn’t turn out quite as planned. The “shawl” was more like a wide scarf and since it was knitted in acrylic, I couldn’t block it to make it wider. I could have kept knitting and just gave her a normal scarf but I don’t think she would like it. I’ve never seen her wear a scarf but she wore a Fourteen neckwarmer last year. She likes the cold and doesn’t like anything fussy around her neck.

So I had to come up with an alternative very quickly. I was going to see her the next day! Coincidentally, Oiyi blogged about the bow-knot scarves she’s made and I had an AHA moment. Bow-knot Wisp!

Instead of having a ribbed “knot”, I knitted it in a moss stitch.

I was still anxious about giving the knitted scarf to her. What if she hates it? “There’s nothing more you can do now”, I consoled myself. She came over the next day in a bright pink top and her purple watch. So far, I was spot on with the colours she normally wears. I gave her the scarf and she wasn’t too sure about it. She smiled and thanked me, saying the scarf is pretty. The uncertainty was still there.

We went to the beach after lunch and she agreed to let me take photos of her wearing it. It was such a beautiful Autumn day and the metallic threads in the lacy scarf caught the sunlight and sparkled.

Rosemary volunteered to take photos of me wearing the scarf. The scarf matched both our tops beautifully.

She looked carefully at the Bow-knot Wisp around my neck. “It’s pretty”, she said, “now that I can see it better”. “It’s sparkly too”, she went on. You cannot imagine how relieved I felt when she said all that. She also appreciated that the scarf stays put and doesn’t move around like a regular scarf. Phew!

We went to the club after the photo taking, where she treated me to cakes and tea. Let me be more specific. She shouted me THREE slices of cake! I protested but she insisted that the two of us can easily finish THREE slices of cake. Nope. I could only finish two halves. Haha… Boy, were we full after that!

In my next blog post, I will write up the knitting pattern for the Bow-knot Wisp. Have a lovely week and I’ll see you soon!

We went to Simon and Meg’s for dinner last night. Kyle and Linda brought their cute baby son, Ewan, along and I had lots of fun photographing him. He just kept staring into the camera when I pointed it at him! But it still wasn’t easy capturing a bouncing baby boy!

I’m a tinge disappointed at how the photos turned out. The Panasonic Lumix camera is crap at low light. I hate using the flash but I just have to put my pride aside from now on and use the flash more often indoors. I’d rather capture the shot then worry about colours!